About Portland Structural Engineer
Portland Structural Engineer connects Portland-area homeowners with independent professional engineers registered in Oregon. We are not an engineering firm. We do not perform assessments, issue reports, or carry out repairs.
Why this exists
Portland has an unusual concentration of houses that need structural attention and an unusual concentration of people who do not know it — a hundred-year-old housing stock, most of it never bolted down, a great deal of it on slopes. Meanwhile the first search result for most of these problems is a company selling the repair. This site is an attempt to put a licensed engineer in front of that conversation instead.
What we ask of engineers in the network
- Current Oregon PE registration through OSBEELS, verifiable with the board
- Professional liability insurance
- A written, stamped report rather than a verbal opinion
- Residential and seismic retrofit experience specifically
- Willingness to say when a question is geotechnical and refer it out
How we are paid
Engineers pay a referral fee. You are not charged for using this site, and the engineer sets their own fee for the work.
What we will not do
We will not give a structural opinion over the phone, and you should be sceptical of anyone who does. Whether a crack matters, whether a wall is still moving, whether a foundation can hold an anchor bolt — those are judgements made on site with measurements, not from a description.
Verifying a registration
Ask for the PE registration number and check it with the Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying. It takes about a minute. Oregon registers separately from Washington, so an engineer licensed in Vancouver is not licensed to practise in Portland.